readJson static method
Parses a JSON string into a Map object.
May throw a FormatException if the input string is not valid JSON.
Implementation
static Map<String, dynamic> readJson(String json) {
  if (json.isEmpty) return {};
  dynamic jsonObj = jsonDecode(json);
  if (jsonObj is Map<String, dynamic>) {
    return jsonObj;
  }
  // If the parsed JSON is not a map, return an empty map.
  return {};
}